A Box
by lucy-starry-sky
Summary: Post season 3 reflections. Doesn't adhere to the season 4 storyline yet. There is a box in Julie's wardrobe. Summer knows the feeling.
1. Chapter 1 Julie

Title: A Box

Author: lucy-starry-sky

Summary: There is a box in Julie Cooper's wardrobe. Post Season 3

Rating: K+? (references to (a) death)

A/N : A kind-of-drabble, belated post season 3 tag. Quiet, unassuming and hardly ground-breaking.

Imaginative title, I know ;) Spellchecked, but unbeta'd, therefore, I proudly declare that all mistakes and moments of poor quality are mine. **If** someone would like to beta it, or has any improvement ideas, drop me a line.

These characters aren't mine, no profits earned from this, etc.

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There is a box in Julie Cooper's wardrobe.

This is not an unusual thing. There, in fact, are dozens of boxes in her wardrobe – shoe boxes, hat boxes, boxes for dresses, accessories, all the necessities that an insecure, slave-to-fashion should possess.

But there is something unusual about this box. Not that you would think that by looking at it.

The box isn't too large, about the size and shape of a large shoe box. It's rather pretty, a sandy colour with white, blue and silver stripes all over, with a stripe of a very pale cream flower pattern. It's the kind of design that instantly makes you think of the beach, and beautiful weather, but there's something classy and different about it.

Even the contents are not immediately remarkable. Inside, there is a neatly folded pair of jeans, a white sleeveless tunic top, some very expensive but unassuming flat shoes, a gold necklace carefully wrapped in tissue paper and a creamy coloured knitted cardigan.

It's only when you look closely that you see why, in fact, this box, these clothes are something else. Why everyday Julie stares at this box, sometimes more than once, and every so often, she has to open it and look at the contents. Smell them. Trace every inch of them with a perfectly manicured fingernail as she remembers.

It's only when you look closely that you notice the yellowish stain on the shirt, that kind that can only come from blood drops that have been mercilessly scrubbed and scrubbed away until they aren't apparent on first sight. That you smell the subtle odour of …. fuel, that _still_ lingers on the jeans, after they too have been washed and washed and washed.  
Occasionally, you can see the mascara stains, that could only have from someone sobbing and sobbing their heart out, into these clothes, only to panic at leaving tell-tale marks of despair and demand that they be washed _immediately_.

These are the clothes that Julie's daughter died in. In this box, are the clothes that her beautiful, beautiful, beautiful baby girl chose to wear on her last day.

In these clothes, her daughter told her one final time that she loved her.

That her daughter had a terrifying car crash in.

Took her final ever breaths in.

She hadn't known originally what to do with them. There's no popular method for getting rid of your dead child's final outfit.

So she did what came naturally. She created perfection, on the surface. She had those clothes washed back nearly to state that they were when Marissa last put them on her lithe, long, flowing body, so that no-one could ever tell what had happened.

And then she put them away.

In a classy, different, pretty dress-box in her wardrobe.


	2. Chapter 2 Summer

Title: A Box

Author: lucy-starry-sky

Summary: Post Season 3 Reflections. Julie, Summer and others to come

Rating: K+? (references to (a) death)

A/N : A kind-of-drabble, belated post season 3 tag. Quiet, unassuming and hardly ground-breaking.

Was originally a one-off piece on Julie but the fantastic reception her story got prompted by muse to give me a few more chapters. This is Summer's. Ryan's is being written but he's such an introspective little bugger!

Note: now that season 4 has started, this is probably AU.

Imaginative title, I know ;) Spellchecked, but unbeta'd, therefore, I proudly declare that all mistakes and moments of poor quality are mine. If someone would like to beta it, or has any improvement ideas, drop me a line.

These characters aren't mine, no profits earned from this, etc.

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As Summer's eyes gradually focus she realises that she's been staring at that box for a little over half an hour.

Well, if you wanted to be technical, she had been staring at that box for 4 days, and a little over half an hour, given that she really hadn't moved from her spot on the bed since that sunny day with the swelteringly hot breeze that blew over the excessive number of flower bouquets that lined the church. Yellow roses. Summer could practically see Marissa rolling her eyes at that and exclaiming dramatically, "God, I could _kick_ my mom's ass for that!".

Coop **would** be the kind to say that in a church.

The box didn't do anything. The box clearly didn't realise the importance of it's current function – to contain all reminents of Summer and Marissa's friendship.

Stupid box.

Summer barely remembers Marissa's funeral. Her best friend's funeral, for Christ's sakes.

Contrary to popular belief amongst the Newport crowd, she was **not** drunk, on any medication or suffering from debilitating grief at the time. Well, maybe a little of the last one.

Still, there is a reason why she couldn't focus, couldn't feel Seth's hand squeezing hers intermittently, trying to evoke some kind of response. Or support. Seth was probably taking it just as hard as she was. Seth had a grieving girlfriend, brother, ex-step-grandmother **and** a dead friend

A dead friend in a box.

A box that was going to be placed in the ground forever.

Summer barely made it through biology. The thought of bodies and death and cutting up and decomposition had brought out an spirited "Ew!" every time her teacher had mentioned them, but the thought of it happening to her Marissa made the bile rise up in the back of her throat.

**That** was what disturbed her to the point of almost catatonic. Her friend was going to be buried deep underground forever in a box and Summer was never going to see her again. Just like that. Someone dies and they get put away for ever, like they were never there and that was almost too impossible to deal with.  
Marissa wouldn't deal with it. She would just drink and party and shop it away until invariably, it just became another soon-to-be-outdone point on the 'list of things that happened way too dramatically in Marissa Cooper's life'.

But now, that list had finally been completed and Marissa would never add to it again.

Marissa would just lie there, limp, still and pale, in that white box, while the dirt piled and piled and piled up and the sounds of mourners grew gradually harder and harder to hear and that smell of earth soaked her nostrils and it got hotter and hotter, or would it be colder and colder, who cares when your body is rotting and…..

Summer made a sudden dash from her bedroom to the bathroom, just in time to throw up the remains of her breakfast into the toilet.

It had been 4 days since that white box with her friend inside it, was lowered into the ground. Before the funeral, the funeral director, a tackily sympathetic woman with too blonde hair and too fake a smile had asked her, _being Marissa's best friend_ if she would like to be one of the people to place a handful of dirt on the _coffin_.

Summer's mind at the time had filled so quickly with so many ways to scream** no** at the woman that she had frozen completely and her father had had to step in and carefully whisper that _perhaps it wasn't the best idea_.

She remembered Ryan, far too pale to be let out of hospital, leaning on Sandy as he robotically limped up and slowly let the earth slide between his fingers onto the pure white varnish.

She remembered Kaitlin, unceremoniously scattering the dirt on there. Summer wasn't sure if she really was that much of a bitch to care so little, or if she was so young and uncertain of who she was, that she was still stuck in portraying that image on a day when even the likes of Julie Cooper let themselves be open and vulnerable.

Summer couldn't do that to Marissa. She couldn't be part of the group that sealed her up, in that tacky, over-varnished white _mess_ of a coffin.

Summer spat out the offending taste in her mouth and reached for the box of tissues sitting on the bench top, and then suddenly paused, looking at the rectangular object in her hand.

Ha.

She still couldn't escape those boxes.


End file.
